Microsoft Surface Go With LTE Advanced

Microsoft's small, entry-level tablet gains LTE connectivity, making the Surface Go even more ready to go. Your eyes and fingers may balk at the 10-inch screen and its matching-size keyboard, but you'll be impressed with its quality and versatility.

Jan. 18, 2019

There are plenty of country songs about being a restless, rambling roamer. None of them talks about staying near Wi-Fi hotspots. If your travels take you where 802.11ac can't follow, Microsoft has a solution in the LTE version of the Surface Go ($679), the smallest of its Surface tablet line. As we said in our August 2018 review of the original Surface Go, the 10-inch slate's performance is lukewarm at best and its optional keyboard is cramped for long typing sessions, but it's light, well-built, and—with the addition of cellular data—a convenient way to stay in touch with email and everyday office tasks.

Top of the Line

You may have seen Microsoft's TV commercials for the Surface Go, which tout its $399 base price with 4GB of RAM, 64GB of eMMC storage, and Wi-Fi. My $679 test model ups the ante with 8GB of memory, 128GB of faster solid-state drive storage, and of course LTE as well as Wi-Fi. All versions rely on Intel's Pentium Gold 4415Y, a dual-core, four-thread, seventh-generation processor running at 1.6GHz.

The keyboard is extra—$129.99 for the Signature Type Cover in cobalt, platinum, or burgundy Alcantara fabric (a kind of mock suede). The Surface Pen stylus, not included with my review unit, is $99.99. That means that the full bundle will set you back over $900 plus a cellular data plan, which is expensive by any measure—you'll find yourself comparison-shopping 2-in-1 detachables and convertibles (few of which, admittedly, have LTE) as well as mini tablets.

Consumer versions of the Surface Go, like my test unit, come with Windows 10 Home in S mode, which is nearly indistinguishable from the full-fledged operating system but only lets you install apps from the Windows Store. To make a permanent switch to regular Windows 10 Home, as I had to do to install our benchmark tests, you must visit the Store and enter your Microsoft account information, then perform a few clicks. This spoiled my preference for setting up Windows with an offline account.

The LTE version weighs a few feathers more than the regular Surface Go at 1.17 pounds. Measuring 0.33 by 9.7 by 6.9 inches, the silver magnesium tablet is a fraction larger and heavier than the 9.7-inch-screened LTE Apple iPad (1.05 pounds, 0.29 by 9.4 by 6.6 inches). Among Windows tablets, it's substantially smaller than the Lenovo Miix 630 and Microsoft's own Surface Pro 6, which have 12.3-inch screens and weigh 1.7 pounds apiece.

The power button and a volume rocker are on the top edge as you hold the tablet in landscape mode with the screen facing you. On the right edge are an audio jack, a USB Type-C port, and a proprietary connector for the AC adapter or Microsoft's $199.99 docking station.

The magnetic connector for the Type Cover is on the bottom and the flush-fitting SIM tray is on the left. (The provided tray removal tool slid in and out of the pinhole without doing anything, but a bent paper clip popped the tray open on the first try.) A microSD card slot is hidden under the kickstand.

A Diminutive Laptop Alternative

The 5-megapixel front-facing camera offers Windows Hello face authentication as well as Skype conversations; it produced well-lit and detailed images in my tests. The 8-megapixel rear-facing camera won't send smartphone makers back to the drawing board, but it captures serviceable snaps (though image quality plummets as you use the digital zoom).

Like the Surface Pro's, the Surface Go's kickstand opens smoothly and lets you prop the tablet at a good variety of angles, though like other detachables it works much better on a desk than in a lap. The same is true for the Signature Type Cover keyboard, which attaches easily—the magnetic connector is one of the surest and simplest I've encountered—and then folds its rear edge to tilt to a comfortable typing angle.

The keyboard has several handy features. For one thing, it's backlit. Also, it has dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys (along with Escape and Delete keys on the tiny top row). And it has a smooth-tapping touchpad, so you're not always lifting a hand from the home row to use the touch screen. (That said, I was peeved that you can't double-tap and slide to drag as on a real laptop touchpad, but must hold down the corner with one hand and drag with the other.)

It also has a shallow but snappy typing feel, with a pleasant rain-on-the-roof sound. The biggest adjustment you'll have to make is that it's cramped, with the A through apostrophe keys spanning 7.19 inches instead of the desktop regulation 8 inches—nothing you can't master with practice, but nothing you'll want to write a novel on, either.

What Microsoft calls a PixelSense screen provides 1,800 by 1,200 pixels of resolution, which works out to 217 pixels per inch. It's a beauty, with vivid colors and contrast. Brightness is ample and viewing angles are wide. Fine details are crystal clear, though its small icons take careful tapping. Streaming videos look great—and sound surprisingly good, too, with audio that's better than expected (albeit free of bass and somewhat ragged at top volume).

At least with the AT&T SIM card provided for testing, LTE connectivity worked so seamlessly I almost forgot to mention it. I measured online speeds with Ookla's Speedtest.net (whose parent company, Ziff Davis, also owns PCMag). Downloads ranged from 7Mbps in my Boston apartment to 62Mbps outdoors, with uploads peaking at 9Mbps. (Compare that with 199Mbps down and 12Mbps up for my home office's Wi-Fi.) That wasn't fast enough for streaming video, but more than adequate for Web browsing and email.

Testing: Taking on Beefier 2-in-1s

As for other performance results, only one other dedicated Windows 10 tablet has completed our new benchmark suite: the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Tablet. So I compared the LTE Surface Go not only to that slate but to a 12.3-inch detachable, the Dell Latitude 5290 2-in-1, and two convertibles, the Core i3-powered Acer Spin 3 and the HP Spectre Folio, whose 5-watt Y-series processor was the closest thing PC Labs has tested of late to the 6-watt Pentium Gold. The Windows-based contenders' specs appear in the comparison table below.

I also included the test results we got in 2018 from the non-LTE version of the Surface Go, which was outfitted with much the same core components (Pentium Gold, 8GB, 128GB).

Realistically, it's unfair to put the Surface Go through benchmarks like this; as you'll see, its Pentium CPU outpaces Atoms and Celerons but isn't meant to keep up with Intel's Core series. It's more important to state that subjectively, the tablet felt more than perky enough for everyday productivity apps and multiple browser tabs, though hardcore gamers will obviously be wise to steer clear of any of these convertible tablets.

Productivity, Storage, and Media Tests

PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, Web browsing, and videoconferencing. The test generates a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.

PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a Storage suite that we use to assess the speed of the storage subsystem. The result is also a proprietary numeric score; again, higher numbers are better.

Four thousand points is an excellent score in the PCMark 10 productivity benchmark. The Core i5-based Dell and Lenovo came closest, while the Surface Go finished last but not really miles behind the Acer, which combines a Core i3 with a hard drive rather than SSD, dooming it to last place in the storage subtest.

Next is Maxon's CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads.

The Pentium Gold was thoroughly outclassed here, but to be fair, no one's going to try editing video on a 10-inch tablet. The Surface Go is perfectly capable of puttering around in Excel.

We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and, at the end, add up the total execution time (lower times are better). The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.

With only 4GB of RAM, the Spin 3 couldn't launch Photoshop CC at all. The Surface Go gamely chugged along and completed the exercise, but that's about all you can say for it.

Graphics Tests

3DMark measures relative graphics muscle by rendering sequences of highly detailed, gaming-style 3D graphics that emphasize particles and lighting. We run two different 3DMark subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which are suited to different types of systems. Both are DirectX 11 benchmarks, but Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Fire Strike is more demanding and made for high-end PCs to strut their stuff. The results are proprietary scores.

All these scores are well below what we consider competent for playing demanding games, though the Surface Go scored a moral victory by edging the Spectre Folio. As with any tablet, casual and browser-based games will be your pastimes of choice.

Next up is another synthetic graphics test, this time from Unigine Corp. Like 3DMark, the Superposition test renders and pans through a detailed 3D scene and measures how the system copes. In this case, it's rendered in the company's eponymous Unigine engine, offering a different 3D workload scenario than 3DMark, for a second opinion on the machine's graphical prowess. We present two Superposition results, run at the 720p Low and 1080p High presets.

These scores are reported in frames per second (fps), the frequency at which the graphics hardware renders frames in a sequence, which translates to how smooth the scene looks in motion. For lower-end systems, maintaining at least 30fps is the realistic target, while more powerful computers should ideally attain at least 60fps at the test resolution.

These systems only made it about a tenth of the way to the smooth-gameplay threshold at the 1080p preset (except for the Acer, which crashed). In other news, I don't run as fast as Usain Bolt.

Video Playback Battery Rundown Test

After fully recharging the device, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the device into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 1080p file of the open-source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system conks out.

The HP showed the most stamina, but the Surface Go should easily get you through a workday with power to spare. It fulfills its mission as a grab-and-go productivity partner and communicator.

Outclassing iOS and Android

Its price keeps it from being an impulse buy and its size keeps it from being an all-day typing station, but otherwise it's hard to come up with serious objections to the Surface Go LTE. The tablet's build quality puts plastic slates to shame. Its access to the Windows ecosystem gives you an avalanche of apps, even if it can't run them at blazing speed. And its connectivity is smooth and convenient. It's an appealing alternative to the fifth-generation Surface Pro with LTE.

Microsoft Surface Go With LTE Advanced

Bottom Line: Microsoft's small, entry-level tablet gains LTE connectivity, making the Surface Go even more ready to go. Your eyes and fingers may balk at the 10-inch screen and its matching-size keyboard, but you'll be impressed with its quality and versatility.

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About the Author

Formerly editor-in-chief of Home Office Computing, Eric Grevstad is a contributing editor for PCMag and Computer Shopper, where he earlier served as lead laptop analyst and executive editor, respectively. A tech journalist since the TRS-80 and Apple II days, Grevstad specializes in lightweight laptops, all-in-one desktops, and productivity software, all of which he uses when commuting and telecommuting between PC Labs and a cat-filled home office in Old Greenwich, CT. Email him at homeoffice.eric@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @EricGrevstad. See Full Bio